A Glass of Wine Rebuilt
by Toasterman
Summary: Shinji and Asuka learn about themselves and fall in love, causing massive ramifications. A remake of the late 94Saturn's quintessential ShinjixAsuka story, it is part tribute and part experiment, taking the structure and plot of the original wacky shipping story while attempting to maintain series-true characterization.
1. Chapter One

_It is a rewrite of a story by 94Saturn, also called _A Glass of Wine. _It was a story that I read when I was a wee child of 13, almost ten years ago now, and it was the story that got me into writing fanfic. Probably writing in general. It was the perfect story to introduce a young Eva fan to the idea of writing about his favorite series. It is the best example of that time-honored Eva story, the one where Shinji and Asuka fall in love, and the whole world just pauses at some point after Magma Diver. It is cornerstone of senseless lime and lemon. Gratuitous dating scenes, lots of idiosyncratic and nonsensical character development. I think all the characters who could be dating end up dating by the end of it. It is a story written by someone who really enjoyed writing it, and a lot of people evidently felt that. It is a well-read and reviewed fic with deep roots in the fandom._

_It is also sadly unfinished due to 94Saturn's unexpected death in 2009. He had a great many friends around the community. I was not one of them, but just a reader. Still, I was saddened by it. In a way this is a tribute to the story and man that got me into writing, and a love letter to a childhood spent up late at night reading kooky stories about cartoon characters._

_If none of that means anything to you, this is a story about Asuka, Shinji, young love, and a ton of sinister Gendo plotting. Enjoy._

A Glass of Wine (Chapter 01)

She was a soldier before anything else. It was a moniker that no one had ever given her. Not her father, not her mother, not the myriad combat trainers and educators. It was entirely self-appointed, and she preferred it that way. Soldiers had a duty. Soldiers were the best. Most importantly, people respected soldiers.

Nobody ever said it would be easy, and she never expected it would be. This was a war after all. Some monster comes crashing through your city, killing civilians, then you owed it a shot in the head.

But Asuka Soryu never thought it could hurt this much. She sat in the kitchen staring at the table, trying to push the phantoms out of her mind. It was a ritual occurrence. Every operation brought its own phantoms—little synaptic twinges and ghost pains that flitted across her body, fallout from synching minds with something so inhumanly vast. During her first live fire exercise she hadn't unfurled her AT field quickly enough and a cruise missile blew a hole in her torso armor. She felt that sucking chest wound for a week after, tossing and turning in the middle of the night, trying to stop the bleeding. It was a lot for an eight year old to handle, but it was nothing compared to this.

She wore a two year old sweater, bought before her growth spurt. It was too small and hugged tight against her body. She didn't have an excuse for it but she desperately needed one. The truth was just too embarrassing—that she could still feel the magma pressing in on her. Its heat was dulled by the D-Type equipment, but she could still feel the weight of it. It was suffocating. The sweater kept a constant pressure against her skin that was real. It helped override the phantom feeling, at least when she didn't focus on it.

The swish of the front door opening reached her ears, but Asuka didn't look up. She heard Misato march into the room, heels clacking the wood floor. Her superior and guardian set her briefcase down on the table and grabbed a beer from the fridge. She took a long gulp, draining the day away.

"Hey, Asuka," she said. "Where's Shinji?"

"Cleaning duty at the school. You wanna pace yourself?"

"Good to see you, too." Misato looked at her ward's hands. "Sage advice from the one holding a cigarette."

Asuka turned the cigarette over in her fingers. She had honestly forgotten about it, and why she had picked up the pack in the first place. She supposed she didn't really want the thing. Had she a better mind for introspection, she might have noticed the cigarette for the cry it was. As it stood, she simply set it down.

"I don't really want it," she said.

Misato walked to the sink and drained what was left of her beer. Asuka watched her, confused.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Going for something harder." Her guardian gave a smile. "Work has been hard lately. For both of us. I'm feeling wine."

"Funny, I'm feeling underage."

Misato didn't turn away from where she rummaged through the cupboard. "You go to war every other week, Asuka. I think you can have a drink."

"And end up like you?" Asuka said. She saw the slight hitch in Misato's movements and knew that her words had connected. It was a simple payback. For what, the teen had no idea, a consequence of a mind grown beyond its petty influences. Misato had deduced her depression, and she deserved to hurt for it. Not too much, but just enough to even the keel.

Misato brought two glasses back to the table and poured. "Light up, then."

"What?"

"Light the cigarette. See what you think."

Misato grabbed one and lit it. Her first draw was long and deep. She exhaled calmly.

Asuka, never one to be outdone, snatched up the lighter and did as she was told. She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, all at once and far too much. Smoke stung her throat and needled through her lungs. She shuddered, coughed, and stamped the cigarette out.

Misato grinned. "Not so good?"

"Horrible!"

"Yep." The Captain put out her own, then slid one of the glasses across the table. "I'll trade you one bad habit for another. Deal?"

Asuka said nothing. She picked up the glass and sipped, partly out of curiosity, but mostly to get the smoke out of her throat. The wine certainly worked. It was a shocking contrast, from the ash to the fruity tang of the wine. It was a fuller taste then she had expected—the downside to a palette dampened by carbonates and sugar since childhood.

"Like it?" Misato asked.

Asuka shrugged. "Wondering what's behind it."

"Fermentation," Misato said. "Grapes. Italian tradition."

"So cheeky," Asuka said.

"You look like you could use it." Misato grinned. "Who says there's something behind it?"

"I do."

The women sat in silence for a long time, drinking and looking at everything but each other. In the quiet, Asuka became aware again of the phantoms that closed in around her. One hand subconsciously moved to her shoulder.

"You feel the pressure, don't you."

Asuka looked up. "What did you say?"

"All that heat, down there in the belly of the volcano." Misato was looking at her over the rim of her glass. "You can still feel it, can't you? Pressing in. Suffocating. Drowning and dragging you down. You were down there for a total of twenty-three minutes, and for every single instant of it, you couldn't feel anything but the weight of the world trying to crush you."

"Like you would understand."

"But I'm not wrong." Misato pointed to her briefcase. "Those files aren't just for show. I do read them, and I am actually briefed on your mental state. Y'know, beyond this past month of firsthand experience."

Suddenly, the sweater didn't help a damn bit. Asuka stared at the table and felt the renewed pressure against her flesh. The sensation flowed in and out like waves breaking on a beach. Between the lulls, her synapses were so dead to it that she could barely imagine the feeling. At their peak she felt like she was being strangled.

Misato waited a moment, then spoke. "You know how I know? I mean, I could have guessed, but I'm not that good."

Another person would assume the question as rhetorical and wait, but Asuka didn't. She had already figured it out.

"Shinji," she said, meeting the Captain's eyes. "He was down there, too."

"With no suit. If you think it was painful, imagine what he had to feel. Despite all the claustrophobia and suffocating and all that, the thing that his report has that you would certainly lack is the sensation of his skin boiling off." Misato took another sip. "Apparently it comes and goes. So that's fun."

Asuka ignored the sarcastic barb. "And you want me to, what, sympathize with him? Help him out?"

"No, I don't. Sometimes people help each other, Asuka. That's part of growing up. You aren't an island, as much as you'd like yourself to be."

"I don't think I'm an island."

"You want I should grab your psych report? Literal reams of evidence directly from your mouth. Stuff about living by yourself and thinking for yourself and not needing anyone else for anything ever no matter what."

"You're paraphrasing."

"Pretty sure that's an exact quote, from when you were eight."

"Whatever." Asuka stood up from the table, pulled the sweater tight to ride out the next wave. "I don't need Shinji."

"I'm not saying you need him. I doubt he needs you, either. You're both totally self-sufficient."

That last comment stopped Asuka in her tracks. She turned. "In what world is _he_ self-sufficient?"

Misato raised her eyebrows from over the brim of her glass. She knew her words had hit the mark, returning barb for barb. Asuka realized it, and the realization infuriated her.

"Explain that," she said.

"He cooks." A hand waved around the kitchen.

"Do better."

Misato lost her playful mood. It was a brief change, a hardening of the eyebrows above a sharp glare, but it was enough. It was the look that she gave over the inter-plug comm suite, the look that came with shouts about AT fields and blue patterns. Most importantly, it was a look that Asuka had never seen in this kitchen before. On some level it was a frightening revelation.

"Asuka, Shinji Ikari lives life alone. And I know that's something that you crave, but for most people, loneliness is a problem to be solved. He's become self-sufficient out of necessity not want, and the first thing he does with his self-sufficiency is to help the people around him." She held up a hand. "Don't scoff yet. I can feel your scoff coming on."

"Oh, it's coming. But finish your nonsense first."

Misato gestured at the table with splayed fingers, in the way of a person who gestures with no point but loads of emphasis. "Shinji came here and fought in a war he didn't know existed without so much as a thank you. He has continued to put his life on the line ever since. He has fought in six separate engagements, three of which you were present for."

"He's a pilot. That's his job."

"No, that's your job. You don't know any better. Three months ago Shinji Ikari was a _kid_. He spent his time reading and playing cello and being a _kid_ as best he could. Now he is here, doing the thing you do as well as you do—"

"Hey!"

"No, now is not the time for that." Misato held up her hand. "The point is, he has put his life on the line on six separate occasions and, aside from me, has received no appreciation. Some people would call that being a hero, especially if some people had been about to die in a volcano and were saved by someone who, for all intents and purposes, could have let them be crushed to death."

Asuka frowned. "You ordered him down there."

"I didn't have time to order him down there. Your cable snapped and he was in that volcano. I hadn't even made a decision yet. Honestly, I might have told him to hold back. One Evangelion, to some people in this organization, is an acceptable loss to defeat an Angel."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't care." Misato leaned back and cradled her wine against her chest. "I know none of this is really getting through. You're fourteen and I'm twenty-nine, so by default I'm all kinds of wrong. But do me a favor when you storm off to your room and just think about it, okay?"

Asuka scoffed. She made it the most German scoffy scoff she could, and then stomped away to her room, trying to ignore the truth in her commander's words.

((()))

Shinji Ikari came home to a series of closed doors. All three of his roommates were boarded up for the night at 4:30, and he was left with an empty house. He wondered what was wrong, and in true Shinji Ikari fashion, began to think of it as his fault.

He sat down at the living room table and pulled out his books. The TV stayed off out of long habit. Being raised by an educator had taught him focus, if nothing else, and he had a tendency to blot out distractions. In addition, TV was a passive activity, and if the past week had taught him anything, it was that passivity let the pain in.

Shinji froze as the sensation built from nowhere. He dropped his pencil and braced himself against the table. Thinking about the pain inevitably brought it on. He waited, and it hit. Ghostfire washed up his arms and across his chest. His breath fled him and he bit down to stifle the whimper that built in his throat. Deep in the throes of it, Shinji wondered how long he would have to put up with these flashes. The false break in his arm had taken a week to go away, and the stomach aches from his second sortie had faded just a couple weeks ago.

How long would this last? Another month? Or would this be permanent? How long could he live with surface nerves that occasionally thought they were on fire?

The moment passed, and he leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. For a moment, he was conscious of little more than his respiration, focusing fully on regulation. All of his friends in Okinawa and he was stuck here, his skin not-boiling him into fits of near-epilepsy.

His breathing calmed, and he opened his eyes to see one of his roommates standing in front of him. His knee jerked, smashing into the underside of the table. New pain.

"Asuka," he said, rubbing his knee. "How long have you been there?"

The Second Child shrugged. "About halfway through the seizure. What the hell was that?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh."

Asuka turned on the TV and sat down next to him. It was about the worst place she could possibly sit to watch TV, since she had to look through his head just to see it. Shinji was immediately suspicious.

"We need a couch," she told him. When he didn't respond, she went on. "Sitting on the floor all the time really bites."

"I'm sorry."

Asuka glared at him. It was the glare that always served as a harbinger for angry German-speak, and a glare he had learned well. "You're really the most frustrating person I know."

"I'm sorry?"

"Gott im Himmel." Asuka took a breath. "I know about your skin thing, okay? I have the same thing. A similar thing, at least."

Shinji wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that information. "Okay," he said, in his best attempt at saying something.

Asuka went on. She picked at the table in front of her and avoided his eyes. "I feel like I'm being suffocated."

"Okay."

"Some days it's like I—" She stopped. "Look, do you feel any of this, too? Because if you don't then there's no use for me in even talking to you about it."

"I do feel it. I do."

"Because really, I don't need to talk about this, you know."

"Sure."

"I could just leave you here with your bubbly skin and do something fun instead. I could totally do that. I mean, this is all just for your benefit."

"Okay."

Her fingernail ran across his physics book, digging into the groove of the spine. They both watched it in silence.

"How did you do on the test?" she asked.

Shinji swallowed. "Well enough."

"You got a C."

"Yeah."

Asuka's finger reached the end of its run, tapped the cover, and retracted into her fist. "Thank you," she said.

Shinji blinked. "Huh?"

"Thank you," she said, still not looking at him. "For the volcano. You didn't have to do that but you did. So thanks, I guess."

Shinji Ikari learned what it felt like to fracture his brain. Of all the things that she could have said, this was certainly among the most unbelievable.

Her unexpected gratitude broke open the mystery of their conversation, and its secrets were suddenly clear to him. Asuka, for the first time ever, sympathized with him in some capacity. He had no idea what to do with that information. His left hand decided that it wanted to be on her shoulder, but he stopped it halfway. It was clear that his left hand had lost its fucking mind. Still, it stayed there, suspended in space, halfway between a hug and a high-five.

"And don't say anything, either. I don't need anything back." She leaned back and fell into his arm. For a minute he pulled at it, but Asuka held firm, keeping it pinned to the wall. "That's fine where it is," she said.

"What—"

"Shut up."

Shinji shut up. They sat for a minute, her with her hands in her lap, him with one stuck behind her, the silence filled by the TV's jabbering adverts. Shinji became uncomfortably aware of where his hand was. Eventually, he set it on her shoulder. It wasn't an embrace, but it was as close as he would dare. For a moment his mind flashed back to that horrible moment in Rei Ayanami's apartment—a flash of suppressed memories, of pale flesh and red eyes that bored into him.

Asuka closed her eyes. "I bet you really like this," she said.

_Not really,_ he thought, but kept his mouth shut. He had no idea what to do, so he sat, feeling the needles in his arm, and watched her face. With her eyes closed, he actually had a minute to look at her without fear. She had a serene expression, and he felt that she was enjoying this more than he was. Probably the pain it caused him, he assumed.

Then her expression changed. Her hands tightened around her sweater, and she grimaced. Shinji wasn't sure what it was—maybe genuine sympathy, or maybe just a remnant link from their synchronization training—but he felt he understood what was happening. She was feeling the pain again, just like he did.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"What the hell do you think?" Asuka looked at him. "Don't you say another word. You got that?"

Shinji nodded, though he desperately wanted to know why. He got his answer when she leaned into him. No matter what had come before, this was now definably a hug. There was no doubt. Her head was on his shoulder, and he couldn't smell anything beyond the fragrance of her hair. Her shoulder dug into his ribs, and he shifted around it, accommodating.

"Asuka—" he started.

"What did I say?"

"Sorry."

Her body was completely tense, and she held her arms tight to her body. Shinji finally let his arm relax into the embrace, and she didn't kick away from him. Tentatively, he brought his other arm around and laced his fingers together. After a moment, he realized he was holding her, and how insane the whole situation was really hit him.

But he didn't move. He waited out the ten minutes it took for her pain to go away in silence. When she finally did move, his hands disappeared from her body.

The Second Child stood and looked down at him. "You're welcome," she said, and walked away to her room. He heard the door close behind her, and he was alone in the living room.

"Thanks," said Shinji Ikari, to no one in particular.


	2. Chapter Two

A Glass of Wine (Chapter 02)

"And then they hugged for like ten minutes. He kind of held her, too, from what I can gather. What do you think?"

Misato Katsuragi's voice rang around the empty command center. It was 0100 on a Saturday and the facility was operating on a skeleton night shift. Below her the secondary techs milled at their desks, obscured in the half-powered night lighting. They were the only staffers in the chamber, aside from the token security posted at each entrance.

Perhaps the area should have been stocked to capacity in the event of an emergency, considering the time it took to draw primary command staff into position would take a half hour that Earth might never get back. Katsuragi wasn't proud of the lax attitude, but Nerv was an organization that ran on a civilian mindset cultivated over a decade of peacetime. Keeping the staff on first level alert at all times was a sure way to breed fatigue, fatigue that could cost lives in a crisis. There had yet to be more than one Angel attack in any three week period—and never one at night—so at least there was some precedent behind her calculated risk.

"You're playing with fire." Ritsuko Akagi didn't look up from her datapad. She just sat there, sipping coffee and passing judgment.

Misato frowned. "Why do I talk to you?"

"We're friends."

"Remind me why."

"Shared experience?" Ristuko turned and smiled at her. "What do you want me to say?"

"Dunno. How about, 'Misato, you are a genius'?"

"Misato, you are a genius."

"That's a start. Now say it like you mean it."

"Don't ask me to lie, Captain."

"Such a bitch."

Ritsuko laughed. "In all seriousness, none of my doctorates are in psychology. How should I know if your little scheme will pan out?"

"I don't know! I have no way to gauge any of it. I keep trying to think about what I was like at fourteen, but then I realize that I didn't have to fight a war when I was fourteen, and all that wisdom gets thrown out the window." Misato sighed and slumped into the chair at tac ops one, where Lieutenant Hyuga spent most of his working hours. "Help me out, Rits. I'm basing all this on your advice, after all."

The scientist's fingers stopped their ceaseless tapping. "On my what now? I never told you to try and push those two together."

"Then what was all that crap about hedgehogs getting it on?"

"Misato…" Ritsuko took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "You told me he was having troubles at school and that he had no friends. I was just trying to explain why."

"And I'm just trying to help him with that!"

"I didn't mean for you to try and force the kid into anything."

"Really?" Misato sat forward. "Then what was all that stuff with Rei's ID card? Having him run it to her apartment? You're telling me that's not some kind of setup?"

Ritsuko held up a hand. "I'm not saying what you're doing is a bad thing. In theory, of course I want Shinji to be happy."

"Have you ever heard yourself talk?"

"All I'm saying is that when you looked around to find a hedgehog for Shinji to get close to, why did you pick the spiniest hedgehog in Tokyo-3?"

"You're just married to this metaphor, aren't you?"

"You brought it up." Ritsuko looked at her friend. "What's the end goal here, Misato? What's the best case scenario? They fall in love, get married at fourteen and have babies?"

"You're asking _me_ about the end goal of a successful relationship? Doctor, that's ill-advised." Misato grinned. It was infectious, and got the other woman grinning, too.

"What a fool I have been," she said.

"I don't know," Misato said, sobering to the question. "Each of them needs a friend, you know? They need parents and commanders and all that, too, but what they could really use is a friend. Someone who gets them from their own angle. If they could just get along, the two of them might make it out of this okay."

"I've never heard you this morose. What's the world coming to when you're the cynical one?"

"It's late, it's dark, and I've got nothing to do but think." Misato shrugged. "Hard to be sunny when the sun isn't out."

Ritsuko laughed and spun back to her datapad. Misato wasn't sure what to make of that.

((()))

There was no window through which the morning light could enter, but the day arrived just the same. Shinji Ikari awoke to the sound of a city growing and chose to rise with it. It was a deep basal thrum that reverberated through the rebar in the building and the marrow in his bones, equal parts utilitarian defense and incidental alarm clock. The intensity varied depending on which blocks were scheduled for nightshift on any given cycle, but it made little difference. The tiniest quake was enough to jar him, even after months living in the city.

He knew that some of the natives had learned to sleep through their city's daily growth spurt. When asked about it, Toji had acted like he had never felt it. Shinji believed him. He imagined Toji as a person who could sleep through anything. Nothing bothered Toji.

He climbed from bed and got dressed. He didn't sigh in annoyance. He didn't wage a mental war with laze to push the covers away. He simply got up and got to the day, pulling on a shirt as he pushed away the dregs of a dream where he lay as an ant in the dark of a god's mind.

((()))

Asuka buried her face in the pillow and waited for the city quake to cease. She had half an intention to go back to sleep when it was over, though she knew that wouldn't be the case. She was awake now and the damage was done. Still, she waited until it was over to get up, just so the city wouldn't be the thing that got her up in the morning. She wouldn't give it the satisfaction.

When she had fastened her uniform and combed her hair, she walked to the door and listened. The sink gurgled in the kitchen and the scent of breakfast touched her nose. Par for the course, Shinji was up before her. She held still, one hand on the door frame while she waited. She had no intention of walking into that kitchen before she was damn well good and ready.

A full week since the kid had touched her and he had yet to bring it up once. What the hell did that mean?

Asuka looked at her watch, figured she would give it another minute. She looked at the mirror next to her and evaluated the reflection like a target assessment. Her hair was perfect, her build athletic, and her legs shapely. She could outrun, outthink, and out-hot any other girl in her class. She knew those to be facts. What she didn't know was why she was thinking about them now and what relevance they had to the idiot cooking her breakfast and why the hell he didn't want to do the touching thing again because for God's sake had he not looked at her at all! What in the hell was the matter with him?

So it was that, hopping mad and possessing no game plan, Asuka left her room and headed for the kitchen.

((()))

Misato caught the finale of Asuka's thrashing from the living room. It was a spectacular finish, filled with a tirade of insults and a lot of Shinji apologizing. The main thing Asuka seemed to be mad about was her breakfast, which meant that the thing Asuka was really mad about wasn't the breakfast at all. The spiniest hedgehog in Tokyo-3. Misato thought about intervening, but in the time it took her to reach a decision, Asuka was gone.

She finally entered the kitchen and saw Shinji sweeping a broken plate and the remains of a tamagoyaki off the floor. "Hey," she said. "Everything okay?"

"Sure." He stood and dumped the plate and food into the trash. "Sorry about the plate."

"I don't care about the plate, kiddo."

"Yours is on the table," he said, and went back to the counter.

Misato frowned, but she sat down and started to eat, anyway. The tamagoyaki was fresh, and he had even set out a cup of tea—his quiet, un-intrusive attempt to keep a can out of her hand until the evening. It was that last touch that killed her frown.

"Shinji," she said. "What was Asuka mad about?"

He shrugged. "The food."

"What about it?"

"She doesn't like Japanese cooking. Sometimes she throws things."

_Nonsense._ Misato chewed, mulling over her next words. She had no idea what to tell the kid, no fabrication in her back pocket. She was crap at lying, anyway. She thought back to her conversation with Asuka a week ago, the catalyst for all of the complications and tension since, and realized that she couldn't take that same tact with Shinji. She could play hardball with Asuka. The kid would come back at her just as hard, if not harder. If she was going to help this kid, she needed a defter touch.

"How did you like making out with Asuka?" she asked.

The spoon slipped from his fingers and clattered in the sink. Shinji's head whipped around and he looked at her, shocked. "What are you talking about?"

"I share a door with the living room, kiddo." Misato grinned. "Don't think I didn't notice your smooching."

"We didn't kiss or anything!" Shinji stared at her. "I don't even know what we did. It sucked."

"I know." Misato laughed despite herself. She stretched her foot out and toed a chair out for him. "Come sit down. The dishes can wait."

"I've got school in a bit."

"You can be late."

"No I can't."

"I'll write a note. Sit," she said. After a moment of hesitation, Shinji finally did as he was told. She smiled at him. "Now, was that thing with Asuka really so bad?"

"It was strange," he said.

"Strange is good. Strange is fun." Misato could tell by his face that she wasn't getting through to him, so she changed tact. "Why do you think Asuka did that?"

"How should I know?"

"Because she's your friend."

Again, he stared at her. "That's not really the right word, Misato."

She kept her expression even. "And why not? The two of you are teammates, roommates, you go to the same school. She ought to be your closest friend. What's stopping that? Just because she's a little standoffish?"

"A little standoffish," he repeated, incredulous.

"Maybe a lot." Misato set a hand on his shoulder. "The point is, you aren't the easiest kid to get along with, either. Everyone has their problems, Shinji. Sometimes we need someone else to help us solve them."

He nodded. "That's what Asuka said."

That was unexpected. "She said she needed help?"

"No, I needed help." He shrugged. "She came to me because I needed it. She saw me, uh…"

"Shaking?" Misato offered. He nodded.

"She saw me and sat down with me. I guess she thought she owed me for the volcano, so she sat there and helped me out."

"Oh, wow." Misato reached over and ruffled his hair. "You're so damn oblivious it hurts."

Shinji pushed her hand away and stood up. He finished prepping his lunch and started packing his school bag. Misato sipped her tea and watched him, waiting. She could see him thinking it over, dissecting her words, replaying the moment in question over and over in his mind's eye. That was the difference between the Second and Third Children. Asuka understood what she wanted to understand, when she wanted to understand it—which was always immediately. Shinji took his time, worked it out privately, and did what he thought was best. He had a sharp mind and a big heart. Both were equally pitiable.

When he was finally ready to leave, he stopped at the door to the corridor and looked back at her.

"Yes?" she said.

"She was in pain, too," he said. "The volcano hurt both of us. Right then, I understood Asuka better. All the synch training helped, but nothing like that."

"That's a good thing," Misato said, but he kept looking at the floor, his brow furrowed.

"I just don't know why she went back to being…" He trailed off.

Misato stood and walked over to him. "Shinji, women make no sense. I can say that having been one for twenty-nine years."

"You're twenty-nine?"

"That's classified." She set a hand on his shoulder. "But I am, and all of that experience tells me one thing: do something nice for Asuka. She's had a hard life, too, probably harder than you would ever expect. Maybe one day she'll tell you about it."

"Yeah, right," he said. Misato ignored him.

"Keep doing nice things for her, because despite all the yelling and screaming and apologizing, and the hopes and dreams of all of humanity, it's just the two of you out there most of the time, and you've got to keep each other safe. Keep helping her, and she'll help you, too. That's what friends are."

Shinji looked at her. "What am I supposed to do for her?"

Misato sighed. "Do you want me to do everything for you?"

"I'm sorry!"

"Go to school," she said, and pushed him away with a light shove. "And remember: synch test tonight at four!"

"Sure thing," he said.

Misato watched him until he was gone. She walked back into the kitchen and scooped up the phone, hitting speed dial four. The phone rang once and picked up. There was no voice on the other end, just the silence of a Section 2 agent listening to her.

"He just left. Sorry about the hold-up, if it made you guys split your detail." She sipped her tea and got no response. "So are you trained to just not respond ever or what?" she asked. More silence.

"Poop-ass," she tried. When she still got nothing, she hung up, tossed the tea cup in the sink, and went to take a shower.

((()))

It was an idea that sank roots deep in his brain and started festering immediately, and like all bad ideas, he knew it wouldn't go away unless it was released. It hit him halfway to school, germinating out of Misato's words and what he remembered of Asuka's tirade—her absolute hatred of Japanese food, and the shattered plate on the floor. _"All it ever is with you people is vegetables and wheat! Would it kill you to eat something straight off the hoof, once in a while?"_

"_Keep helping her, and she'll help you, too. That's what friends are."_

Shinji got to the intersection of Ozawa and Prefect, and found two friends waiting on him. Kensuke looked up from his phone, which he had been checking repeatedly for the past seven minutes. The kid was a nervous wreck. Toji didn't seem to share the feeling.

"You're late," Kensuke said.

Toji stood up from the guardrail he was lounging on, and the three of them started walking. "Something happen with the demon bear?" he asked.

"Is that what we're calling her now?" Kensuke asked. "I can never keep up with the nicknames."

"The nicknames are contextual, man," said Toji.

"Look who learned a new word," Kensuke shot back. Toji moved toward him and sent the otaku reeling. "Kidding, kidding!" he said.

Suzuhara turned to Shinji. "But seriously, what did Blitzkrieg Bitchy do now?"

"Don't say stuff like that," Shinji said.

"Why the hell not?"

"Yeah, why the heck not?" Kensuke echoed.

Shinji shrugged. "She's a friend."

His compatriots were silent a minute, trying to come to terms with his words. The silence put a smile on Shinji's face.

"Since when?" Toji said, after a moment.

"I don't know."

"Well, we don't just make pacts with the devil every day, man." Toji crossed his arms. "We've got standards!"

"Contextual standards," Kensuke put in.

"Shut your face! Can't you see we have a mind to save, here?" When he looked back to Shinji, he was still frowning. "You don't gotta like her just because you work together. Trust me. My dad hates the people he works with."

"It's not that." Shinji smiled. "She's a lot like me, I guess."

"Now I know you're losing it!"

Kensuke shook his head. "No, man, he seems serious."

"Maybe." Toji crossed his arms. "Just don't expect her to be let in the group."

"That's fine," Shinji said. "I just hope you'll want to come to the party."

Both his friends perked at that. "You're throwing a party?" asked Toji.

"Yeah, but you have to keep it a secret."

Kensuke nudged Toji. "Okay, now I agree. He's losing it."

"What sort of party?" Toji pressed.

"A dinner party," said Shinji, warming to his own insane idea. "A German dinner party."

((()))

Author's Note:

_From 94Saturn's profile, "The characters in NGE are really physiologically screwed up! That is what peaked my interest in the series. But the tragedy of the ending quarter of it always bothered me. I have always wanted to come up with a happy ending."_

_I'm going to take that as the purest expression of his intent with the original "A Glass of Wine". Preserve the psychological stress of the characters, yet give them a happy ending. I've sent out PMs to the people that knew him, asking if they'd ever heard tell of the ending he intended the story to have. Hopefully one of them will get back to me. If they don't, I think it's safe to fall back on his core intent: give the story a happy closure point._

_Thank you for your support thus far. I'll keep my author's notes short, and mostly focus on important decisions in adapting the original. The German dinner, for instance, is all accomplished in chapter two of the original. I felt we needed more build up. That will likely be a common occurrence. Things will progress more slowly in this version, while other things might not be included at all. Shinji fingering Asuka in front of Toji and Hikari comes to mind as a possible omission._

_Thanks for reading._


	3. Chapter Three

A Glass of Wine (Chapter 03)

He didn't need to breathe in the plug, but his lungs tried anyway. They worked out of muscle habit, but they were sluggish in the heavy liquid and entirely unnecessary, given that the LCL oxygenated his blood with or without them.

It was common that at the heart of a synch test, when his mind drifted away and he felt at once in his skin and outside of it, in the skin of a cybernetic giant, he would become faintly aware that his lungs had stilled in his chest—just another senseless motor skill lost to the mediation. He would feel them in his torso, waterlogged and cold, and in that moment experience the life of a drowned man.

Living a death and dying a life. Disconcerting didn't really cover it.

Still, he had come to crave those moments, because with the discomfort and the anxiety came the most profound part of synchronization. Those were the instants where he felt his mind sinking into the abyssal heart of the machine around him, the times where he played a game of chance, of seeing how far he could dip his persona into another, vaster mind, before running back to the light of individuality. Like a child venturing into the pitch dark of a light-less basement. Dangerous, exhilarating, and lonely, it was the best and worst part of Shinji Ikari's synch tests.

"Okay, we're done for the day." The voice shattered his focus, snapping him back into the present of his own body. His lungs fluttered, chugged liquid, and he was alive again. "Pilots can dismount. Thank you for your time."

Shinji felt the transfer cables disconnect from the test plug's exterior, a quiet clunk of steel snapping free. At once, the presence in his mind vanished—his link to the distant Unit 01 severed in a blink. The interior of the plug drained of energy, and the screens around him drooped in runnels like old panes of church glass, before finally fading to the sterile olive drab of deactivation.

The LCL was siphoned out next, and finally the hatch popped free. Shinji stepped out onto the deck and hurled what was left of the liquid from his system. He had done so a dozen times, but still had found no way to do it gracefully, just a lot of varied versions of doubled-over puking. When he got to his feet, Asuka was standing before him.

"What are you planning?" she said.

Shinji rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the flash of stars that had built up at the corners of his vision. "I'm sorry?" he said.

"Hikari has been acting dodgy and awkward all week." Asuka glared at him. "If you're planning something, Third, you would be better off just telling me right now."

"What does that have to do with me?"

He watched her search his face, the stars in his vision narrowing his sight till he could see little beyond her red bangs and the blue of her eyes, and he suddenly felt very strange in a way he couldn't identify. He had no idea what he wanted to do with Asuka, but he knew it somehow involved staring at her until she told him to stop, or he died. Whichever came first.

She shoved him in the chest with two fingers. "You'd better not be planning anything."

"I'm not!" he said.

"Good."

Shinji watched her walk away. It wasn't until the testing bay door had shut behind her that he let himself inhale again. He began to wonder if maybe his dinner party wasn't such a good idea after all. The whole thing reeked of minefields and booby traps.

((()))

Ritsuko turned from the viewing window in the pribnow box. "What was all that about?" she asked.

The audio pickups in the testing bay had relayed the pilots' conversation directly to the observation staff, who now sat very awkwardly, categorizing data with their heads down and lips zipped. Someone coughed, slicing the air. Misato sighed.

"Shinji is planning a surprise party," she said. "It's serious. Bratwurst in the fridge and everything."

"For what occasion?"

"No occasion, just fun."

"I suppose it's only natural that he would try and get closer using what little he actually knows of her," Ritsuko said. "Bratwurst. Kind of a heavy handed gesture, don't you think?"

A retort formed in Misato's mind about over-calculating matters of the heart and dying alone surrounded by a horde of cats. Civility kept it from getting to her mouth. "He's just trying to be a good friend," she said, instead.

"I think it's adorable," piped Lieutenant Ibuki.

"I think keep typing," said Ritsuko.

"Yes, ma'am."

Nerv's head scientist finished annotating her report and set her datapad aside. Hands in the pockets of her lab coat, she strode over to her friend and lowered her voice. "Is this more of your hedgehog plan?" she asked.

"It's not a plan, Rits. I told you that." Misato smiled. "And, actually, this is something Shinji thought of himself. I just helped him find the food and provided the space."

"And a healthy dose of the courage, I'd wager."

"You're not wrong."

Ritsuko grinned. "And when is this auspicious occasion? Soon, I hope."

"Tomorrow, actually," Misato said. "When they're done with their after school synch tests."

((()))

School dragged on, and Shinji spent most of it keeping a secret from getting out. Of the three classmates he had invited to the party, only Hikari was a weak link. Kensuke and Toji wouldn't talk simply because they had no reason to talk to Asuka at all. Neither one was a huge fan of his co-pilot. A part of him now regretted inviting the two of them. The party was supposed to be a fun occasion for Asuka. Hindsight being what it was, Shinji doubted the wisdom of inviting a pair of boys that she absolutely loathed.

Still, there was the issue of Hikari. She was Asuka's friend, and she wasn't given to deception. Shinji considered talking to her during lunch, but while he had the capacity to understand he problem, he hadn't the courage to tackle it. In his mind, he knew Hikari as a distant friend. Inviting her to the party in the first place had been difficult enough, a task he eventually shoved off on Toji, who then shoved it off on Kensuke. The whole thing had been an exercise in middle school bureaucracy. Shinji couldn't bear to repeat any of it.

Instead he kept quiet, content to whittle away the rest of the day watching those around him from over the red rim of his budget laptop. It was a common activity for him and one that he was never wholly comfortable with, this habit of being an invisible person. The observed were always unaware of their observer. He got used to noticing the little things each person did. For instance, Tohiro Ogama, in the front row, picked and ate the fruit of his nasal. Makoto Senyaka doodled compulsively, making the same interlocking shape on every square inch of his binder. The kid next to him—whose name Shinji still didn't know, largely because the kid was too close to him—always had gum, even when he wasn't supposed to.

Yukiko Senah, sitting just near him, one row in front and two to the left, ran a hand through her hair. Shinji had watched her before, in the way that he had watched every girl in room 2-A—with a mixture of fear, excitement, and confused longing. Though now, he found he wasn't watching her as often, and those emotions had fairly fled him as a result. In fact, he wasn't watching any of them as much as he normally did.

Most of his time was spent looking at Asuka. She sat directly in front of him, separated by five empty desks, like empty vertebrae along the classroom's spine. She stuck out in the class, if only because she hadn't the ingrained "feet flat, head forward" training of her Japanese peers. She sat askance, one leg folded over the other, both jutting out into the aisle. Her foot tapped as she typed, the laptop balanced on her crossed leg. She shook her head and threw a lock of red hair over her shoulder from where it had fallen out of place. Shinji watched her hair fall, and his mind failed to remember what her hair smelled like, only that it was incredible, and he would do anything to get that moment back.

He wondered if she felt the same way. He wondered if cooking bratwurst was a good idea, and if a surprise party was asking for a beating. He wondered what it was like to kiss a girl, what it was like to kiss Asuka. He wondered if these kinds of wonderings made him a shitty friend or not, and he wished he had the gumption to tell her about them.

Asuka itched her leg. Her hand caught the hem of her skirt, peeling it back, and for a moment Shinji saw more thigh than he could ever want. The sight sent his eyes scurrying elsewhere, anywhere. His head turned in the way heads turn to retroactively make a look a glance, and his vision swiveled right into a pair of red pupils.

Rei Ayanami wasn't a girl given to furtive glances. She wasn't given to furtive anythings, so far as Shinji could imagine. When she did something, she did it fully and without subtlety. When she looked at someone, she stared.

Shinji knew of only three occasions where the First had looked him directly in the eye, and none were casual encounters. In one, she was naked and he didn't want to think about it. The second was later that same day, and she slapped him directly afterwards. The third had been in the aftermath of Operation: Yashima, and in that worst of moments, the girl had smiled.

Now she was staring at him again, and like every other time, Shinji had no idea why. He looked back for a long moment. She had no emotion on her pale face. No rage, no surprise, no sadness. It was the Rei Look, that expression of silent curiosity. Looking at her, Shinji realized that he wasn't half the invisible person that his co-pilot was. Eventually he blinked, and looked back to his laptop, trying to ignore the eyes boring into the back of his head.

((()))

The after school synch test became a citywide blackout and an Angel attack, which devolved into a highly unsanitary adventure through the geofront's emergency access tunnels. Twenty-four hours after talking to Shinji in the testing bay, Asuka found herself guiding a gargantuan war machine up a lift shaft meant to ferry buildings. An hour after that she stood in the locker room shower, lit only by an upturned flashlight as she let scalding hot water run down her back.

It hurt, and she bit her knuckle, fighting back tears. She gritted her teeth and waited for her nerves to deaden, just so that she wouldn't have to feel the sizzling acid that yet still seemed drizzle down her spine.

"Damnit." Her voice was but a husk, stolen by the steam. "Damnit, damnit, damnit!"

"Asuka?" The sound came from nowhere, its entrance hidden by the hammer-roar of the water.

"What?" she said, failing to keep a tremble from her voice.

"It's Misato." Asuka heard dress shoes on the tile floor as her guardian came to a stop just beyond the curtain. "You okay?"

"Yes."

"You've been in there for twenty minutes."

"I'm fine, thank you." Asuka reached back and turned off the water. The burning went away. She reached out through the curtain with an open hand. "Towel," she said.

Misato proffered one. "I'm worried, Asuka."

"That's nice." One wipe of the towel turned cotton into sandpaper, and lit her back on fire. Tears welled and her mouth opened in a scream kept silent by pride. She quickly learned to daub, soaking the moisture away in small increments. When she was done and her tears had been wiped away, she threw open the curtain and stepped out, towel around her neck, affecting every inch the confident pilot.

"Worried about what?" she asked.

Misato grabbed her by the shoulder as she passed. "What the hell did you do in there?"

"Nothing." Asuka shook off the hand and walked to her locker. "I'm fine."

"Asuka, your back is peeling!"

"I'm fine."

Misato was quiet for a minute. When Asuka had fully dressed, she finally spoke again. "How can I help you?" she said.

Asuka extended a finger and pushed her locker door shut, then pushed it further until it locked. The click sounded around the darkened room like a suppressed gunshot.

"You want to help," she said. When Misato didn't respond, she went on. "Help like how? Help like I actually need help, like I'm some broken doll that needs to get wound back up?"

"Asuka—"

"No. Help like how? Help like push Shinji and me together? As if I could ever benefit from getting closer to that animated turnip? I can't, and I won't." Asuka grinned, and the low lighting turned it into a sneer. "But that would make you feel better, wouldn't it? Because this whole thing is just you trying to sleep better at night."

Captain Katsuragi frowned at her pilot. "You're wrong," she said.

Asuka's grin faltered. She had expected a fight, not this. "What does that mean?"

The Captain didn't offer an explanation. Instead, she simply walked from the locker room, her heels clicking her to the powerless, open door, and then down the corridor beyond. In a moment the sound had faded away into the blackened facility, taking the rest of the Second Child's victorious grin with it.

((()))

The blackout had killed the fridge, and with it the bratwurst. Shinji pulled it out and looked at the contents, soggy and melted in their plastic-wrapped container. He frowned, rationalizing that it didn't really matter, anyway. It was eight o'clock by the time he got home, and the Angel attack had fairly cancelled the dinner for him. He imagined that even Toji's parents, famed for their laxity, would keep him indoors on the evening of the day Tokyo-3 stood still.

Shinji tossed the ruined container in the sink, where it could thaw completely before he threw it out. He heard the front door open.

"Misato?" he called.

"Nope." Asuka walked into the kitchen, hands in the pockets of her sweater. "Disappointed, Third?"

"Thought you were Misato."

"Obviously." She walked over to where he was standing and looked into the sink. "Nothing planned, huh?"

"This wasn't—"

"Stop lying," she said. "Hikari told me all about your little dinner party."

"Sorry," he said.

He turned to walk away, and as Asuka watched him, she came to a conclusion. It wasn't brought on by the events of the day—not the Angel fight or the words she'd had with Misato. And it certainly wasn't a sudden revelatory burst of love. It a pang of regret that punched her in the chest when she saw him turn away, and it was a feeling that hurt more than any phantom acid burn or spurned guardian's receding footsteps.

She cleared her throat. "I really ought to thank you."

Shinji turned. "Huh?"

"Well, kind of. I mean, you didn't intend to, but you almost threw a party commemorating my greatest victory."

"You mean the battle today?"

"No, the math quiz. Of course! Leading a three-Evangelion sortie against the ninth Angel, defeating it through adverse combat conditions and a serious disadvantage?" Asuka pulled a chair to the counter and stood on it, so she could reach to the top of the cabinets. "I'd call that an impressive victory, well worth commemorating."

"What are you doing?" Shinji said.

"Helping you throw your stupid victory party, idiot." Asuka grabbed a bottle of wine from where Misato had tucked it away the week prior, and jumped down from her chair. She held it up. "Ta-da."

"Asuka, we're not old enough to drink."

"Grab glasses. Misato and I drank some about a week ago. It's fine."

"Asuka—"

"Shinji," she said, "shut up and grab glasses."

Shinji shut up and grabbed glasses, unaware of how important the next hour of his life would prove to be.

((()))

Author's Note:

_Shorter chapter, but I'm keeping with the update schedule. Figure that's the important part of it. Really appreciate the reviews so far, so I want to thank you for that. Hopefully you'll keep supporting this dopey story. I also like that this is the kind of story that brings the S/A shippers out of the closet._

_As for changes to the original. The German dinner party obviously fell through, though that was only Shinji's first attempt. Expect the concept to be revisited._

_Also, the classroom scene is somewhat lifted from 94Saturn's original, and one of the classmates Shinji is looking at was in the original, as well. I believe it's in his Chapter 03, if anyone is interested._

_Thanks for reading._


	4. Chapter Four

A Glass of Wine (Chapter 04)

She was about half a glass into the wine, with Shinji lagging a little behind. Not that it mattered much. Their bodies were far from ready for it. Asuka compensated for the swim in her vision and the time-delay in her movements as best she could. It had almost become a game. Her words were clear, and she enunciated with care. The last thing she wanted was to slur in front of this kid.

She wasn't sure what kind of drunk she was. She had heard of different kinds—angry, sobbing, friendly, touchy—from her time with Kaji, and she had seen Misato's drunk side more than once. But she was anxious to learn what kind she would be. So far she had only felt the physical effects, which was disappointing.

She watched Shinji as he sat, hands in his lap, looking at the glass in front of him. He almost didn't seem to be awake. She wondered what kind of drunk he would be, and what actually constituted being drunk, anyway. How much did she have to drink? Was it the whole bottle, or would that kill her? Despite her attitude, and though she would never admit it to herself, Asuka was enjoying the thrill of doing something she wasn't supposed to.

Shinji spoke. "It's just so messed up."

Asuka blinked. She hadn't expected him to say anything. "What?"

"This whole city. Everyone goes to work and goes to school like everything is normal, and they ignore the cannons in the buildings and the monsters that try to kill them." He looked at her. "That's why they try to pretend that we aren't pilots. We go to school like normal kids. And everyone in the school knows who we are and what we do, but none of them bring it up."

Asuka shrugged. "Who cares what they think?"

"Or maybe they're afraid." Shinji looked at her, the candlelight casting his eyes in a wavering half shadow.

It was then readily apparent to her what kind of a drunk Shinji was. She started laughing, which earned a glare from him.

"What's so funny?"

She smiled. "You're a mopey drunk."

"I'm not drunk!"

"You are too!" Asuka smiled. "It's okay. Misato is drunk all the time."

"Not _all_ the time," he said.

"Okay, but a lot of the time." Asuka leaned and stretched across the back of the chair, so that the bottom of her sweater nudged up and exposed her bare stomach. Shinji stared at it, a fact that Asuka knew only because she watched him to it, which of course the whole point of the action.

"Whatcha looking at?" she said.

"Nothing." He looked down, at his glass.

She grinned. "I'm gonna go sit on the veranda," she said.

"What for? It's still dark out."

"Exactly, stupid. Don't you want to see what the city looks like when it's all dark?" Asuka stood up from the table and realized that her legs weren't as functioning as she thought they were. She stabilized and grabbed her glass, incorrectly believing herself to be graceful. "No electricity, no noise, no nonsense. You coming or not?"

Shinji shrugged. "I guess so."

"Bring the bottle."

((()))

He found her in the darkness of her office, lit only by her hand lamp. She had retreated there halfway through the cleanup, mostly because there wasn't much left for her to do except wait for the guys in maintenance to get the power back on, and she was too tired to keep up the appearance of in-control operations manager.

He knocked on the open door. "Katsuragi?"

Misato looked over to see him, but a three-foot stack of paperwork blocked her line of sight. It was an all too common feature of her workspace. "Yeah?" she called.

"It's me," he said, knowing that she knew his voice.

"And what do you want?"

Ryoji Kaji entered and pushed aside some of the mountain of paper, clearing a space for himself on the desk. "Just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing."

Misato laughed. "Great timing. Shouldn't the Chief Inspector be out inspecting how this happened?"

"It is strange," he said, as if the city wide blackout in the most secure fortress complex on Earth was something as banal as a dead phone signal. "For all of those backups to fail at once. Kind of makes you wonder."

Misato stared at him. "You are the most frustrating man."

"Am I?" Kaji smiled, shrugged, and she wanted to hit him and kiss him in the same instant. "I apologize."

"You damn well better."

"Actually, I need your help with something."

"Well, there's a first time for everything." Misato crossed her arms. "What is it? And if you say a sex thing, I'm shooting you."

"You would do that?"

"Oh, yeah. They gave me a gun for this job."

"I'm shocked."

"Yeah, it's this whole thing. What do you need?"

"It's not a sex thing. Not exactly."

"Kaji—"

"I'm worried about Asuka," he said. "She's stopped by my office nearly every day since we've arrived in Japan, and on the days she doesn't, I usually get a phone call."

"So she has a crush. It's normal enough, and it's not like everyone hasn't already noticed it."

"That's just it. A week went by without so much as a peep out of her. Then the other day she finds me in the break room."

Misato grinned. "Really, if there is anything about sex in this—"

"There isn't."

"Fine. Go on."

He smiled at her in a way that was not a smirk, the way he used to smile when they were together, back in a lifetime long since turned to dust. It made her wonder if she could engender that kind of unguarded smile in another person ever again. The contemplation of it writhed in her chest, and she hated having thought about it, even briefly.

"All that was on her mind was our little boy savior," Kaji said. "She wouldn't shut up about him."

"What did she say?"

"Only how irritating he is, and how sad it is that he needs her help."

"I'm not hearing a question."

"Very well." Kaji spread his arms. "My question to you, oh wonderful Operations Manager Captain Misato Katsuragi, is what have you been doing to those poor children?"

"What do you mean what have I—" Misato caught herself before the rant could really build momentum, and stared at him for a moment. Revelations came to her. "You talked to Ritsuko," she said.

"Ah. Yes. Maybe."

"That woman. Confidentiality means nothing to her. I really shouldn't be surprised." She huffed back into her chair. "So what, then? She called me an alcoholic puppet master?"

"That's descriptive, but no."

"What, then?"

"She mentioned you had been nudging the kids into a little relationship." He paused. "And something about hedgehogs. I admit I had tuned out by that point."

"Always with the hedgehogs," Misato said.

"It's a strange metaphor."

"She's married to it." Misato raised her hands, gesticulating with feeling. "All I am trying to do is get them to be friends. They should be friends, they both need a friend, and it is silly that they are not friends. Does that make sense?"

"Sure," Kaji said, like he didn't really mean it. "You want my opinion on it?"

"I feel like I'm getting it either way. Are you going to tell me I'm playing with fire?"

Kaji shook his head. "No. I think you're putting a cobra and a mouse in the same cage."

"Now that is a strange metaphor." Misato sat forward. "So you think Asuka will rip our little mouse to shreds, huh?"

"Not quite." Kaji lit a cigarette, then offered the pack to Misato. She shook her head, and he went on. "The biggest challenge for those two is the same challenge that every man and woman has faced since the beginning of time. Just understanding the opposite sex is hard enough when you're an adult, and all the pain and trouble of your life has settled to granite in your soul. But it's tougher for them, because they are so young, but stuck in a very adult situation. Any relationship they have is going to be framed in such a way that it outstrips their respective age, and that's dangerous. Because at fourteen, with all your traumas still bubbling on the surface? Relating to anyone is a pain in the ass."

"Uh-huh. Tell me something I don't know, Mr. Introspection."

"Fine." Kaji narrowed his eyes. "Asuka isn't the cobra. She's a mouse, and in no way is she prepared for the darkness that her love can unleash in that kid's heart."

((()))

The city was dead, the buildings set like tombstones silhouetted by moonlight, and the children watched it from their chairs on the side of the building. The veranda at the Katsuragi residence was rarely used, possibly because it was the only veranda with furniture on it in the entire building, and the isolation of that distinction played into discouraging its use. But with the city's power gone, the isolation didn't seem half as potent.

"I think it's over there," Shinji said, pointing into the city. He laid in one of the veranda's two deck chairs, each alongside a small table. The umbrella for the table was gone—he had no idea if it had ever existed, actually—so that he could see the stars above them.

"Wrong again." Asuka sipped her drink. She had yet to look at the stars.

The Third Child squinted through his intoxication and the darkness. "There, then." He pointed again, at a space between two distant towers.

"Wrong _again_! Do you even look at the ordinance displacement heat maps?"

"I do. Of course I do."

"Then how come you can't point out a single rifle drop for me?"

"I don't know. It's dark."

Asuka smirked. "I could tell you six of them, right now."

"Of course you could," he said.

She sat up. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Nothing! You've just been doing it longer."

"So what?"

"So," Shinji said, "you're better at this than I am. I'm not good with ordinance heat or whatever. You are."

"Well, obviously. But you can learn." Asuka leaned back and smiled. "Where do you think missile tower seven is?"

Shinji pointed. "That one with the blinking red thing?"

"Idiot. It's not even up here. Explicitly defensive buildings are on subterranean rotation until a first level alert."

"But we had an alert earlier today. Why wouldn't they—oh, the blackout."

"And now we've all learned something, children." Asuka made bowing motion with her hands, even though she was lying down. Her second glass was getting towards empty, and she wasn't certain she wanted another. The light swimming in her head had escalated in the past while.

"Asuka, can I ask you a question?"

"Maybe."

Silence.

"Yes, Shinji."

"Why are you a pilot?"

Asuka snorted. "Because I'm the best at it."

"But what if you weren't?"

"What do you mean?" She turned her head to look at him, and saw that he wasn't looking back at her. His eyes were on the city in front of them. It became clear to her that he wasn't asking to learn her reason, but to search for one of his own. Another example of idiot Shinji always needing help.

"I guess I would keep doing it," she said. "After all, no one else can do it. I'd have an obligation."

He was silent. She watched him and lived in the languid world of her alcohol-dulled senses. "Shinji," she said, after a moment. "Do you like me?"

The words hit like a bucket of water. Shinji shot up in his seat, a little too quickly. Blood rushed through his head and he wobbled in place. "What does that mean?" he asked.

Asuka didn't move much at all. She lay with her cheek pressed against the armrest of the deck chair and looked at him. "Not like that. Like a friend."

"Uh, sure."

Her brow frowned above her smooshed cheek. "Sure sounds like maybe, and maybe sucks."

"I'm sorry!"

"Sorry sucks, too. Now do you like me or not?"

"Of course I like you."

Asuka smiled again. "Of course," she said. "I am likable."

Shinji finished his glass and set it on the table. He kept his eyes on the silhouette show beyond the veranda rail, and far away from her. His voice was quiet. "Do you like me?"

His fellow pilot hummed. "Dunno," she said.

"Don't know," Shinji repeated. He stood up, grabbing his glass and the bottle. "I'm going inside."

"Who said you could take that?"

"I think we've had enough." He walked around the table and grabbed her glass. She watched him, and got up as well.

"Hey," she said.

Shinji opened his mouth to respond, but he never got the chance. Asuka's lips were in the way, pressing into his, so that excuses and explanations died in their throats and nothing was left but the moment. It drew out, and his sagging senses felt nothing beyond the wheat-ruffle touch of her fingers in his hair, and the wet, copper tang of her tongue in his mouth.

After a time measured in held breaths, Asuka pulled away. One hand fell away to her side. The other was still against his face, and he didn't dare move away from it.

"Asuka—"

Her hand went away. "You said you were going to bed?" she asked.

"Uh," he said, stammering for a response. "Yeah, I am. Was. I was said I am going to bed."

"Such a strange little boy." She shook her head and walked away, back inside toward her room. "Good night!"

Shinji Ikari was left on the veranda with a sense of bewilderment and a purposeless erection. He stood there a long time, unsure what to do or if he was still in the right dimension. Then there was a bang of transformers firing and the tombstone city lit with a flash behind him, casting his stark shadow against the sliding glass doors. Something in the kitchen beeped as it came back online, and the light from the living room washed across him. Jerked from his reverie, Shinji walked back inside the apartment.

((()))

Author's Note:

_Thank you to the reviewers so far who have pointed out that there are some grammar and spelling mistakes. It made me take another moment to look over this chapter, as opposed to the others which were, I'm ashamed to say, essentially first-draft posts. I don't do revision well. Also, thanks to all of you who review from one chapter to the next. Seeing familiar faces always makes the criticism and praise much more effective. In addition, it gives you tastes to target with the writing, which is always nice._

_I also didn't mean for this chapter to turn into the "Misato and Kaji talk to each other" fest, but I'm kinda glad it did. They're a fun pair of characters to scribble for._

_Similarities to 94Saturn's original are slim here, except of course for the fact that the two characters are drinking wine from glasses the whole time._

_Thanks for reading._


	5. Interlude

A Glass of Wine (Interlude)

Something else's blood fills your lungs and for a minute you feel like you're drowning. That little reptilian part at the back of your brain wants out, wants to swim up, but before you know it you aren't drowning anymore. You can breathe and open your eyes, and even though you feel the blood around you, it seems like it isn't there anymore.

They ask if you're ready. You look at your feet in the stirrups, wrapped in the bulky brown test suit. You don't think you'll ever be ready, and you say as much. His voice comes back to you, tinny through the plug's speakers that haven't even been wired correctly yet. He tells you that it is okay in that way that always means he didn't understand the joke.

You know it'll be okay. This time is different. A completely different Unit. Not like what happened to Ikari, the poor woman. That was a test type. Something went wrong, but you figured it out. This is a production type. You figured it out. It'll be fine.

Turn it on, you tell them.

There is no ceremony, no build-up of energy or slow whine. Just the flick of a switch and suddenly there are colors everywhere and you aren't just you anymore. You're in two heads at once. One of them is you, Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu, scientist, wife, and mother of one beautiful daughter. The other is a blood-forged monster, lashed inside an armored prison and shot through with cybernetics—wrath incarnate, caged by man. You feel that slumbering, bestial intellect at the base of your mind, and suddenly the blood you're swimming in goes away and you can see out, through the eyes of that monster and into the world around it. You see the restraints and the walls of the test cage and the control room behind its armored glass. You see him at a desk, all your comrades and peers whose work led to this moment, and realize that you could crush them all into paste if you wanted to.

You swallow that tantalizing, disturbing impulse. Focus. Control it. Nothing is wrong.

It worked.

But the voices disagree. You can hear them through the speakers, shouting and yelling and confused. The psycho graph has inverted. Id manifestation in progress. Physical construct deteriorating. Dissolution is eminent.

You laugh, but you feel nervous. You try to get their attention. You speak but no one seems to hear you. You try to tell them you're fine, that they need to reboot the system, that the activation simply fried the preferences. That they never accounted for what neural feedback would do to the monitoring algorithms. That's all.

But they don't respond. They can't seem to hear you. You see your husband grab a headset and speak, saying your name, telling you to focus. You open your mouth to tell him that you are focused. Everything is fine.

And then you realize that you aren't alone in the plug.

She is sitting next to you in her brown test suit and uplink visor, and even though you can't see her eyes, you've been in front of enough mirrors in your life to know your reflection. She is you. You know that in a heartbeat. You're looking at yourself, which means that the worst thing has happened. Worse than Ikari. Worse than the prototype.

You've been split. You wonder which part you are, which parts got put into you. You know you aren't the physical part—the physical part is sitting next to you, crying and laughing, spittle from her rictus grin mixing into the blood water.

So you're the sane part. Wonderful.

You try to explain how to fix this, but no dice. They still can't hear you. You reach out to your other self, but you can't reconnect with it. She, you, is still crying. But you can fix this. You're the sane one.

Something deep in your mind, in that shared part of the consciousness that you're still getting used to, rumbles. The monster is awake, and you're in its mind with it, with no physical shell to hide within. It feels out for you, the claws of its conscious mind wrapping around your soul. You tell yourself it is just a copy of a dead god, a flawed attempt at playing creator.

You fight back, and then the monster squeezes and makes you realize that even the corpse of a god is still stronger than a living mortal. It squeezes you into itself, and the last thought you have before you can never again discern between you, it, and them is of the only thing that ever really mattered to you.

Asuka.

((()))

Author's Note:

_So this is something completely different. I got swamped this week with preparations for a party, work, and a lot of other nonsense, but I didn't want to leave this story without an update. That way lies the Dark Side. So I hammered this out. I called in an interlude because, obviously, it's a huge departure. Second person present tense, an entirely different character, etc. It's also sinfully short. But in my mind, an update is better than no update._

_More of your regularly scheduled programming on the 4th. Thanks for reading._


	6. Chapter Five

A Glass of Wine (Chapter 05)

Shinji frowned. Physics was his least favorite subject at school, and it only got worse at home. At least in school he could avoid doing the work in his textbook through a bag of myriad middle school tricks. But at home there was no pencil to get up and sharpen every ten minutes, and no way to doodle without feeling guilty. So he was left with a problem about the velocity of an apple thrown from a plane as expressed in way too many parentheses.

The front door slid open, followed by the sound of dress shoes clicking on tile. A second later, Misato entered the kitchen.

"Good afternoon," Shinji said.

Misato grunted in the affirmative. She dropped her purse on the counter and reached up to the top of the shelves. "Where did my wine go?" she said.

Shinji looked up from his homework. "I'm sorry?"

Misato looked at him. "See this empty bottle and how it was stashed away back on the shelf? If you drank the stuff, why did you put the empty bottle back where I could find it?"

"I didn't—"

"Kiddo, I'm not angry. You don't have to lie." She set the bottle on the table. "Throw that away when you get a chance."

Shinji decided that he had a chance that moment and took care of it immediately. When he sat back down, Misato was across from him, a can of beer in her hand. She drank in quiet for a minute, watching her charge as he worked out a physics problem with a lot of frowning and calculator tapping. It was clear that he needed time to concentrate, and that talking to him wouldn't help a thing. But thinking strategically was something she only did for money, and her shift had ended an hour ago.

"So speaking of this wine," she started. "I'm guessing you didn't drink it alone."

In an effort to keep from incriminating himself, Shinji stayed quiet. Misato drank her beer and smirked, a tremendous idea developing in her mind.

"Pleading the fifth, eh?" She leaned down and picked something up. "Well, I've got the perfect cross examiner."

PenPen was plopped on the tabletop, his butt making a squishy noise as he landed. His large eyes looked terribly confused.

"Misato, what are you—"

"Lieutenant PenPen here has been on the force for twenty years. He's a veteran psy-officer, and doesn't need you to talk to tell what you've been up to." Misato set her hand on the warm water bird's backpack unit and closed her eyes, very theatrically. "Now don't break eye contact with him, Lieutenant. We need this kid's mind read."

PenPen blinked. Shinji chuckled.

"Silence, perp." Misato made dramatic grunting noises. "Oh, yes, I see now, Lieutenant. This young man has been up to the devil's work."

"What?" Shinji started.

"Yes, Lieutenant, I can see it, too."

"What?" Shinji repeated.

Misato's eyes snapped open. "Don't you lie to me, Shinji Ikari. You turned this apartment into a den of sin and debauchery!"

"What? No!"

"Yes you did!" Misato shook her penguin at him. "El Tee PenPen is no liar! You made love to Asuka, and out of wedlock, no less! Have you no shame?"

"No way!" Shinji turned white, which of course had been the whole point of the thing. "How could you even joke about something like that?"

Misato laughed and set PenPen down. He glared at her, feeling betrayed, and hopped down off the table. A second later he was gone, having disappeared back into his refrigerated quarters.

"I'm sorry, kiddo. Your face was priceless." Misato settled down. "I really shouldn't have done that."

"It wasn't very funny." Shinji was wearing his disappointed face. It was the face he wore when Misato dumped all their clothes into one wash load, or left all the dishes piled in the sink for a weekend. Its effectiveness, in Misato's opinion, was completely neutered by how adorable it was.

"You did kiss her," she said.

Somehow, Shinji became whiter. "She told you?" he said.

"Nope. The both of you have been avoiding one another for the last two days. I figured something happened." She winked at him. "Thanks for confirming it, though."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you need to talk about it?"

Shinji shrugged, and tried to go back to his physics. "Nothing to talk about."

"Nothing to talk about?" Misato downed the rest of her beer and hurled it across the room, where it bounced off the rim of the trashcan and fell to the tile. She didn't care, at least not while there was a child's fragile heart on the line. "It was your first kiss. That's all kinds of important."

"Not really."

"Shinji, it's important. What happened?"

The Third Child realized he wasn't going to get his physics homework done, but he didn't push it aside. Instead he just feigned working on it as he spoke, so that he wouldn't have to face the discussion fully. Misato, for her part, pretended not to notice.

"I kissed her on the balcony."

"She kissed you or you kissed her? There's a very important difference there."

"She kissed me, I guess."

"Yes!" Misato clapped her hands on the table. "Then what happened?"

"She asked me if I was going to bed, and I told her I was, and then she said good night and walked away."

"What did you do?"

Masturbated furiously. "Just cleaned up and went to bed," he said. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know." Misato leaned back in her chair and looked at him. "Have you asked her yet?"

"Of course not!"

"You say that like you shouldn't ask her. Why not? She was half of the kiss, and she started it." Misato stood up, grabbed her purse, and pulled another beer out of the fridge. "Just ask yourself: if you want to know why she did it, isn't she the right person to ask?"

"I guess," Shinji said.

The front door slid open again, followed by the sound of grumbling in German. Misato smiled at her young ward. "Here's your chance!"

"I don't think that I should—"

Misato cut him off. "Asuka?"

"Yeah." The Second walked into the kitchen and shrugged her backpack onto the floor, where it would be picked up later by someone who was not Asuka. She looked between her roommates, at the grin on her guardian and the fear in her co-pilot, and realized that something was wrong. "What's up?"

"Well," Misato said, walking out of the room, "I have to do a lot of super important crucial paperwork, and Shinji wants to know why you kissed him! Buh-bye."

The door slid shut, and Shinji buried his beat-red face in his physics book. Asuka's grumbling returned, low and guttural in a language he couldn't understand. Shinji did his best to ignore it, and was succeeding until a slender hand reached into his field of vision and slammed his book shut. He looked up at her.

"Hey!"

"Don't hey me. That assignment is a day late anyway." She shoved him in the side of the head. "Have you been talking about our little incident, Third?"

Shinji pushed her hand away. "She guessed! What was I supposed to do? I don't know how to handle it when a girl likes me."

"What the hell does that mean!?" Asuka shouted, and Shinji realized that his slip of the tongue was about to cost him. "What, us having some wine and me making a mistake means have to like you or something? I mean, I know you're an idiot, but this is a completely new level of narcissism!"

"Asuka—"

"And why in the hell would I like a child like you, anyway? I can think of ten real men off the top of my head that I'd rather date than you. I'd rather _die_ than do it with you!"

"Asuka I don't—"

"And where does she get off talking about something between us?" Asuka pointed at the closed door to the living room, through which Misato had escaped. "That's not her place! And she was smirking! What, like something's wrong with me for liking a boy? What do I have to do to get some sympathy around here?"

When he didn't try to interject, she whipped around and glared at him. "What? Cat got your tongue, Shinji?"

"You like me," he said. It was more of a realization expressed externally than the accusation that Asuka took it for.

"Where did you get that idea?"

Shinji smiled, not knowing why or what else to do. "I like you too, Asuka."

His co-pilot stared at him, eyes narrow. Her mouth opened as she tried to think of something to say. She eventually settled on shouting, "Shut the hell up!" before storming off to her room.

Shinji waited until he heard her door shut. Then he waited to make sure no one else was coming in through the front door. Finally, when the kitchen was quiet and everything was secure, he opened his physics book up again, and returned to the suddenly-less-stressful world of velocity and airplanes.

((()))

Author's Note:

_I know I missed an update last week, but I promise I'll try to stop that from happening in the future-a future where my chapters quit shrinking in size with each installment._

_As always this chapter was shoddily proofread. If you spot any typos, I'd appreciate the corrections (preferably in a PM) so that I can adjust the document._

_Let me know what you think, and t__hanks for reading._


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